The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1887-03-25
MANKATo FREE PRESS,
FRIDAY. MARcH rs. 1887.
RELIEVING SOUTHERN BRETHREN

Editor Free Press:
The veteran" correspondent to the
Inter Ocean pays his respects to Grover
Cleveland and Gen'l Bragg in way or
manner that is not only refreshing, but
30 pointed and truthful that the broad
based agent of the substitute broker
from Buffalo must have an epidermis as
thick as that of a rhinoceros not to feel
the sting of the "Veteran's" sharp pen.
In that paper of the 9th inst, a column
and half communication to the men
above named shows up the animus OF
Cleveland and the Democrats who OPP
posed and vetoed the dependent pension
bin 30 clearly that it would do the heart
of our old dependent veterans good to
read it. To know that there are veter-
ans yet on earth who sympathize with
their unfortunate comrades and dare to
resent the injustice that a copperhead
Of war times and now the ally and agent
OF the rebs who murdered Union SOL
dIers in the prison hell in which our
prisoners were confined, and declared
after Appomattox that their cause was
not lost, but that they would secure by
politics what they had failed to accomp-
lish by arms. There is no Disgusting
the fact that the only settled policy of
Grover Cleveland has been to run the
government during his administration
in the interest of the solid rebel South.
All his appointments prove it. His
vetoes of the dependent and other PEN
sion bills are all made in their interest.
Every INDECENT Union soldier supported
by Northern charity, public or private,
is beneficial to the South by relieving
them from the just payment of taxes to
support the Nations Invalid veterans.
They were the Nations soldiers, they
fought the Nations battles and saved
the Union from dismemberment by the
Southern Democracy in arms and their
Northern allies in secret, and the Nation
should care for them in their old age
and indulgence at the Nations expense,
and it is just that this should be done
and that the Southern Democracy should
in this way be made to bear their just
proportion of an expense, which their
own dlsloyalty made necessity. Cleve-
land now that by devotion to the solid
South and the grace of the Mugwumps
he has attained the position of President
and the Southern rebels have gained by
politics the control of the government,
with himself in the char of State as
much their agent as he was the substi-
tute broker of Buffalo in war time, when
he secreted himself behind a substitute,
now said to be a pauper in Buffalo,
knows that every pension bill he vetoes
keeps 30 many soldiers from Nationar
support and National taxation, thus re-
lieving his solid friends of the solid
South from their share Of the righteous
obligation of the Nation, to the veterans
whose valor saved the Union from the
treason of his Southern friends. He
would save them from all share in the
burden and expense of supporting the
needy veterans of the war, an expense
which the treason of the South made a
necessity, and humiliate them to the
level of paupers, to gain a precarious
support from corporate or State charity
and to become the inmates of county
poor houses or the charitable institu-
tons of Northern cities rather than a
portion of the vast surplus in the treas
ury, or dollar tax collected from his
solid Southern hackers should be used
in paying them pensions, or providing
soldiers homes in the States which turn-
ished them the needy and crippled SOL
diers and destitute widows of soldiers.
The patriotism and manhood of the
meanest soldier in the Union would put
to shame every spark of manhood and
patriotism that ever existed In the huge
mass of apprehension that sits in the
Presidential chair.